Revisiting 'No To Spectacle': Self Unfinished and Véronique Doisneau

In the 1960s, dancers like Rainer, along with the minimal sculptors and conceptual artists with whom they associated, were engaged in what Art Historian Lucy Lippard called the dematerialisation of the art object.7 In retrospect, this took the form of a strategic attack on the conditions of possibility of art making as a means of critiquing art as an institution. Since the early 1990s, artists have engaged in a kind of critique that problematises the role which institutions themselves play in bringing together artworks, art practitioners, art theory, and members of the public in relational situations. [...]far I have emphasised the way Bel's piece is grounded in an ethical, relational aesthetic that critiques the conventions and traditions of ballet. Modern dance artists and their chroniclers have often identified the merits of modern dance by criticising supposed deficiencies within ballet. [...]Isadora Duncan attacked the 'unnaturalness' of ballet movement. [...]Marcia Siegal valorised the supposedly rugged vigour of American modern dance in contrast with what she characterised as the effete decorativeness of the European ballet tradition.18 In Véronique Doisneau, Bel's use of ballet repertoire to critique ballet can therefore be seen as one more skirmish in a long running conflict between rival constituencies. Since Bel is one of a generation of dancer artists who have absorbed the practical implications of recent dance theory, he may well know Sally Banes's discussion of reflexive modernist choreography.